Question: In history class, the girl to boy ratio is $9$ to $3$. If there are $27$ girls, how many boys are there?
Solution: A ratio of $9$ girls to $3$ boys means that there is a group of $9$ girls for every group of $3$ boys. If there are $27$ girls, then there are $3$ groups of $9$ girls each. Because we know the ratio is $9:3$ , there must be $3$ groups of $3$ boys each. There is a total of $9$ boys in history class.